Ready to Return Ep1: For He Hides Among Them
by WorthingtonIII
Summary: The first of three long fics that will tell the stories of Oloki Indo and Nath Kenobi. EDIT: It never happened, but IMO this first chapter is pretty good.


A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

STAR

WARS

READY TO RETURN

EPISODE I

FOR HE HIDES AMONG THEM

Nearly 100 galactic standard years have passed since the horrors of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, and the New Republic has been reborn. Coruscant, which had been transformed during the invasion, is all but restored, and the Galactic Senate now convenes there once again-- although the planet's once-great city structures will never again be what they once were.

The Jedi Order has been growing rapidly in size for decades. Inside the rebuilt Massassi Temple on Yavin IV, a combined Jedi Temple and Academy is housed, and a Jedi Council similar to the one that existed before the Clone Wars sits at the top of the Order, which rivals in size the Order that existed during the time of the Old Republic.

However, with the lack of an adversary like the Sith or the Yuuzhan Vong, the Jedi have been relatively inactive in recent decades, and many citizens of the Republic are beginning to think of them as an archaic, outdated institution whose influence on the government is unnecessary and detrimental to the Republic. A vote is about to come before the Senate regarding the severing of all official government ties to the Jedi Order.

A young girl, who is not a Senator but who will nevertheless have a great impact on the outcome of that vote, now travels to the barren Outer Rim world of Tattooine….

The girl brushed her straight black hair out of her beautiful face as she brought her small, 1-person cruiser out of hyperspace. She smiled with satisfaction, as she did every time her ship emerged from lightspeed exactly where she wanted it to. She had customized this ship herself, and it had come out perfectly—a testament to just one of the many skills she had mastered in her short life. In 16 galactic standard years, she had accomplished more than most people did in a lifetime.

She was picking up a faint signal on the ship's sensors as she approached the planet's gravity well, already beginning to sweat from the intense heat given off by Tattooine's twin suns. She flicked some switches and typed in a password, and sure enough, it was the automatic distress signal given off by her lover's stolen ship.

"So the Gungan told the truth," she said aloud as she removed her pilot's helmet and once again tried to get her hair to stay out of her eyes. She could never get it to stay put, not even when she tied it back, which she usually did. She put her helmet back on and began to bring her ship in for the landing. "If the thieving little bastard's still using that ship, then I'll finally have him." she said to herself. Of course, she knew Nick would have known she was coming—he always did—and would probably have ditched the stolen transport and left on a commercial shuttle. But the ship was here, and that meant he had been here, and that meant that it wouldn't be long before she cornered him. She breached the atmosphere and began her descent.

She came in towards the starport nearest the coordinates of the stolen cruiser. Her equipment hummed as she put her ship down in the landing bay. She didn't have clearance to land, but this was Mos Eisley. The authorities had bigger worries.

She had been walking for only three hours when she found it.

She stood in the entrance to a large starship garage. All around here were ships—fighters, cruisers, transports—and every one of them was absolute trash, except for one.

"Little girl!"

She whirled, insulted at the use of the degrading title, and saw the dirtiest, smelliest human she had ever encountered approaching her. He wore what might have once been typical Tattooine beige robes, but they were so covered in mud, sweat, oil and a few other fluids the author doesn't care to discuss that they were almost unrecognizable. Flies buzzed around his head, and his long beard was full of some sort of unidentified slop.

"How can I help you, pretty lady?" he said, changing his word choice as he got a better look. They were the only two people in the garage, and it could be safely assumed that this man rarely had either business or female company.

"How much for the blue cruiser?" said the girl, grabbing the man's chin and redirecting his eyes to the ship

"Oh, that one!" said the man, as he glanced up, smiling, at what was apparently the only thing in the galaxy more interesting to him than her chest. "She's a beauty, alright. Obviously customized, but very well customized indeed. I can't even tell what model she used to be!" He chuckled. Apparently that was funny. "Just got her two days ago, offa Nick."

The girl's eyes widened. "Who's Nick?"

"Oh, Nick's a good friend of mine," said the most disgusting being in Hutt Space, as he wiped snot from his moustache. "He's been livin' here for 'bout a year. Never even told me he had her until two days ago. He said he wanted to sell her cause he was done with space travel or something. He was heading to Coruscant to move in with an old buddy of his." He belched.

"And who is this friend?" asked the girl, moving slowly toward the man.

"He was a Jedi, I think. Ben—Ben something."

_Old Ben Yadorus! _Thought the girl._ Must be!_

_"_Now anyway, you want to buy the ship?" said the smelly man, as his gaze traveled down her curving body and to the bare legs under her tight, black skirt. "I'd say it'd cost about…."

"Five credits?" said the girl.

"Five credits."

A Jedi would have accomplished this feat with a wave of his finger. She did it by unbuttoning the top two buttons of her shirt.

The man seemed to come to his senses. "Wait…five credits? Are you joking?"

The girl laughed and handed him a Republic note. "I know it's no good out here, but if you get someone to cash it for you, it'll more than cover the cost of the ship."

The man grinned. "This has been one of the most pleasant conversations I've had in a long time. She's yours."

The girl smiled, buttoned her shirt and turned to walk away, when without warning there came a swoosh, a smack, and a sharp pain in the backside.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" she screamed as she whirled furiously. The man smiled and shrugged.

"Sorry, pretty lady, I—hrrk!"

She threw up her hand, her fingers in a pinching position, and stood staring intently into the man's eyes. She held her hand out and kept her gaze on the horrible man as he gasped for air. Slowly, a look of horror on his face, he dropped to his knees and tried to scream. All that came out was a sickening gurgle. Within moments he hit the ground dead.

"I wonder," said the girl to the brand new corpse, "how long it will be before stupid enough to walk into your shop finds you lying here?" She kneeled down, opened his robes, took back her money and returned to her ship.

"Your ship is on Tattooine, my Lord, in Mos Eisley." She said in a transmission she sent to her lover on her way to Coruscant. "I'll pick it up after I've dealt with our Skywalker friend."

…..

_The baby screamed as the strange hooded man picked it up. Its mother ran after the man, screaming._

"_Please, no!" she cried. "My baby belongs here! In Theed, with us!"_

"_For the good of the Republic, the child comes with me!" cried the hooded man._

Olo-ki awoke and shot upright. "Damn," he said. "The same dream again!"

He still had a very long time before dawn—before Larek would wake and expect him for his morning lessons—but it always took a while to get back to sleep after that dream, so he threw on his robes and went outside on the balcony. He looked at himself in the reflecting pool. His very long, blond hair was unkempt and greasy from the night's sleep. His face had broken out again, and his blue-green eyes, normally his best feature, were drooped and crusty. He normally fancied himself a handsome child, but at the moment, he was the ugliest thing he had ever seen.

Sighing, he sat down and gazed out over the jungles of Yavin IV. He had never left this world. He had barely even left this temple. He had been born on Corellia and abandoned, found by Larek and brought here at six months of age. All his memories were of his Jedi training here. He had seen other planets only in pictures and holograms, as was the case for all of his friends. Even after he had turned thirteen and been selected as a Padawan by Larek Fett, he hadn't left—in the peaceful recent years, the Jedi Order's relative uselessness had made missions to other systems rare.

So why these strange dreams of a baby on Naboo?

He had been sitting for about five minutes before he noticed Nath. Over on the other side of the balcony lay his good friend and fellow Padawan. He was in a heap on the ground. What in the name of the Force was he doing here?

"Nath? Are you okay?"

Nath awoke, startled, and leapt to his feet. Olo-ki thought he saw him brush away a tear.

"What? Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

Nath was skinny, and very tall. He towered over the small-statured Olo-ki. His slightly elongated head sported a massive, mushroom-like tuft of curly black hair.

"What are you doing on me and Larek's balcony?"

"Uh…" Nath seemed to think about that for a while. "Well, Mah left to go return a holocron he'd forgotten about to the Library, and I…started sleepwalking."

"Sleepwalking?"

"Yeah, I've been doing that lately…I'm gonna talk to Mah about it. For now I gotta go back to the room before he realizes I'm gone. Good…goodnight, Olo-ki." He ran inside and was gone.

Olo-ki chalked his friend's strangeness up to a lack of sleep and went back to his thoughts. Before long he was sound asleep.

"_The baby comes with me right now, or after I kill you both! Your choice!"_

Nath ran through the halls. He had to get back to his master. Whenever Mah wasn't around...

The breathing.

The endless, mechanical breathing. He could hear it now!

_Khooooh…Peh!_

Nath ran full speed toward their room. Be found the door, ripped it open, and sprang inside.

Mah wasn't back yet.

_Khooooh…Peh!_

The door opened, and a black-booted foot emerged in the doorway. A vaguely humanoid shadow prevented what little light was coming in from the hallway from illuminating the bedroom.

_Khooooh…Peh!_

"Why?" whispered Nath as he covered his sweating, tear-stained face with his arm. "Why don't you leave me alone?"

_Khooooh…Peh!_

In walked Mah.

The breathing ceased.

Nath fell to the ground, exhausted and relieved, and passed out.


End file.
